them with approbation and esteem, or with indignatron and contempt. But every feeling of this sort is lost in the certain and more awful prospect of judgment to come. It is a light thing to be judged of man, who can only kill the body, and blight the reputation, and beyond that bath nothing more that he can do ; but how formidable is the judgment of him, who knows the heart, who records in "the book of his remembrance" the actions of the life, the words that fall from the tongue, the thoughts which arise in the heart; who will bring every secret thing to light, and "render to every mau according to his works," and who, " after he has killed, has power to destroy body and soul in hell."
Aided by the light which sacred history sheds on ages and generations past, we have ventured into the solemn mansions of the dead, and conversed with those silent instructors who know not either to flatter or to fear; and whom the Spirit of God has condescended to delineate in their true colors and just proportions, that they may serve to us "for doctrine, and for reproof, and for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.' We have plunged into ages beyond the flood, and contemplated human nature in its original glory; as God made him, “perfect ;" and man, as he made himself, lost in the multitude of his own inventions.
The "first man, by whom came death...the figure of Him who should come, by whom is the resurrection of the dead; Adam, in whom all die: Christ, in whom all shall be made alive."
We have attended " righteous Abel" to the altar of God, and beheld the smoak of his "more excellent sacrifice" ascending with acceptance to heaven: and "by which, he being dead, yet speaketh."
We have seen the hands of "wicked Cain" besmeared with a brother's blood; and the earth refusing to cover that blood, but calling to Heaven for ven